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The existence of such a being is no demand of the ordinary
man, merely; it is supported by Theologians and, over and over
again, by Plato to whom Eros is child of Aphrodite, minister of
beautiful children, inciter of human souls towards the supernal
beauty or quickener of an already existing impulse thither. All
this requires philosophical examination. A cardinal passage is
that in the Symposium where we are told Eros was not a child of
Aphrodite but born on the day of Aphrodite's birth, Penia,
Poverty, being the mother, and Poros, Possession, the father.
The matter seems to demand some discussion of Aphrodite, since in
any case Eros is described as being either her son or in some
association with her. Who then is Aphrodite, and in what sense is
Love either her child or born with her or in some way both her
child and her birth-fellow?
To us Aphrodite is twofold; there is the heavenly Aphrodite,
daughter of Ouranos or Heaven: and there is the other the
daughter of Zeus and Dione, this is the Aphrodite who presides
over earthly unions; the higher was not born of a mother and has
no part in marriages for in Heaven there is no marrying.
The Heavenly Aphrodite, daughter of Kronos who is no other than
the Intellectual Principle- must be the Soul at its divinest:
unmingled as the immediate emanation of the unmingled; remaining
ever Above, as neither desirous nor capable of descending to this
sphere, never having developed the downward tendency, a divine
Hypostasis essentially aloof, so unreservedly an Authentic Being
as to have no part with Matter- and therefore mythically "the
unmothered" justly called not Celestial Spirit but God, as
knowing no admixture, gathered cleanly within itself.
Any Nature springing directly from the Intellectual Principle
must be itself also a clean thing: it will derive a resistance of
its own from its nearness to the Highest, for all its tendency,
no less than its fixity, centres upon its author whose power is
certainly sufficient to maintain it Above.
Soul then could never fall from its sphere; it is closer held to
the divine Mind than the very sun could hold the light it gives
forth to radiate about it, an outpouring from itself held firmly
to it, still.
But following upon Kronos- or, if you will, upon Heaven, the
father of Kronos- the Soul directs its Act towards him and holds
closely to him and in that love brings forth the Eros through
whom it continues to look towards him. This Act of the Soul has
produced an Hypostasis, a Real-Being; and the mother and this
Hypostasis- her offspring, noble Love gaze together upon Divine
Mind. Love, thus, is ever intent upon that other loveliness, and
exists to be the medium between desire and that object of desire.
It is the eye of the desirer; by its power what loves is enabled
to see the loved thing. But it is first; before it becomes the
vehicle of vision, it is itself filled with the sight; it is
first, therefore, and not even in the same order- for desire
attains to vision only through the efficacy of Love, while Love,
in its own Act, harvests the spectacle of beauty playing
immediately above it.
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